Fiat

Romans 8:28-39

Phrases that spoke to me today:
• Those he foreknew he also predestined...those he predestined he also called; and those he called he also justified; and those he justified he also glorified
• If God is for us, who can be against us?
• Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?
• Nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord

Applying the Word to My Life:
Most saints are remembered by the Church on the day they died. There is an old name for it: dies natalis - their birthday. Not the day they were born into this life, but the day they were born into eternal life.

Actual birthdays are different. The Church celebrates only three: Jesus, John the Baptist, and Mary.

Today is hers.

And maybe that makes today a good day to hear what Paul says in Romans: "Those he foreknew he also predestined...those he predestined he also called; and those he called he also justified; and those he justified he also glorified."

It is sometimes called the "golden chain." Mary gives us a life to lay underneath it.

God knew her before she was born. He had already prepared a place for her in His plan. Then, in a little town nobody thought much of, He called her through an angel.

And somehow that calling would eventually take her all the way to the foot of the Cross.

We know the story so well that it is easy to miss something important: God's plan did not make Mary's answer unnecessary.

She could say no.

God did not treat her like a piece being moved around a chessboard. He invited her. Her freedom was real. And so was her answer: "Fiat."

That means "Let it be done to me according to your word."

There happens to be an Italian car company with the same word for a name. Technically theirs is an acronym - Fabbrica Italiana Automobili Torino - but I still like the coincidence. One Fiat takes you where you decide you want to go.

Mary's fiat allowed God to take her somewhere she never would have planned for herself.

Only one of those Fiats changed the world.

That connects with what we were talking about yesterday. Love often looks surprisingly ordinary when it begins. Mary did not perform some heroic feat. She answered a question.

But she answered it with everything she had.

No conditions. No fine print. No "yes, as long as..."

Just yes.

Most of us spend a lot of our lives writing a story in which we are the main character. We have some idea of how things should go - what we will do, where we will live, who will be part of it, and roughly when everything should happen.

Mary probably had a story like that too. Joseph. Nazareth. A home. A family. An ordinary life.

Her fiat changed all of it.

Her yes was more than accepting an assignment from God. It was handing Him the pen.

She gave up the story she might have written for herself and accepted a place in a much larger one - a story that was never centered on her and that would cost her far more than she could have understood when Gabriel stood before her.

I caught a very small glimpse of that when I became a catechist.

My son really did not want to go to Wednesday night small group. I wasn't eager to give up my Wednesdays either, and at the time I wasn't practicing my own faith particularly well. But I wanted him to be confirmed, so I told him I would give up my Wednesday nights if he would give up his.

That yes led to another one: agreeing to lead a small group of high school guys when I felt nowhere close to ready.

I didn't realize it then, but I had handed God a little piece of the script.

What came back was nothing like what I expected. I learned more than I taught. I grew closer to God than I had been in years. I was allowed into the lives of some young men I never would have known otherwise.

And now my oldest son is leading my youngest son's small group.

I never would have written that.

God did.

But saying yes to God does not mean everything becomes easy. Mary makes that impossible to believe.

Her yes brought tremendous joy, but it also brought uncertainty, fear, suffering, and eventually the Cross. Simeon told her a sword would pierce her own heart, and she lived long enough to discover what he meant.

That is why the end of today's passage matters so much.

Paul does not promise that those God loves will avoid suffering. He says something stronger:

Nothing can separate them from His love.

Not anguish. Not persecution. Not danger. Not the sword.

Mary lived that truth. Her yes did not protect her from suffering. It carried her through it. Even standing beneath the Cross watching her Son die, she remained inside the love to which she had entrusted herself years earlier in Nazareth.

The same God who foreknew Mary knows you and me. He calls us into His story too, usually in ways far less dramatic than an angel appearing in our room.

A conversation. A person who needs us. A responsibility we didn't ask for. A Wednesday night we would rather keep.

And somewhere in those moments comes the same invitation Mary received:

Will I keep writing the story entirely for myself?

Or am I willing to hand God the pen and say,

Fiat.

My Response for Today:
Today I'll name one place I'm still writing my own script, and hand God that page.